Archive 1986 – 2017

Alfaz, Spain Police? The judges have more social status but the police know better the local situation and possible lawbreakers.logo mediation desk What is happening right now, in front of our eyes, for instance in Vila Real, north of Valencia, 13-15 April 2016–“II Ibero-American Conference on Police Mediation” is police revolting against the judges. “We use force to arrest the suspects, deliver them with evidence to the courts, many are found guilty, sentenced to prison, after some time released, presumably born anew–and after some more time we have to rearrest them; old or new crimes, same people. “The theory of individual and general prevention does not work. We must remove the roots, in them and in the local context causing the crimes. We want to add mediation, prevention, to force and arrest”. What happens in prisons? This author spent half a year in prison in Oslo many years ago; connected...

. President Barack Obama has observed, “ISIL – Islamic State – is a direct outgrowth of Al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion – which is an example of unintended consequences – which is why we should generally aim before we shoot”. Many of us, looking at the horror of the Iraq war, waged by the US and the UK against the regime of Saddam Hussein when 200,000 civilians died and a total of 800 billion US dollars was spent on the campaign, need little to be persuaded that there was a Machiavellian plot to find an excuse to make war. Yet there are many in the circles of power in Washington who believe the US should shoot on sight and to kill whenever danger is thought to have appeared- in Iraq, Syria, Libya and, before that, in Vietnam. The so-called “justification” for going to war in...

School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution – Arlington, VA, USA – April 11, 2016 Classical Realpolitik is the priority in US foreign relations. Let force decide issues, if possible by threat, if necessary by fighting to the end. The two traditional nominees for the US Presidency, Cruz and Clinton, both advocate open violence; Cruz by “carpet bombing” and by patrolling Muslim neighborhoods making use of force credible, Clinton by standing by her past record of bombing Muslim countries. Trump, distancing himself from both Clinton belligerence and Cruz patrolling, deepens underlying conflicts in a most unfortunate way by stirring up prejudice and discrimination against Muslims and Mexicans. He wants a fence, built by Mexico, forcing them out. Sanders is so focused on US domestic inequality that he remains vague on foreign policy. However, he might steer US discourse as well as foreign policy by arguing more positive policies; examples below. Net...

It deserves to be noticed that it is only the two anti-establishment candidates who have challenged the foreign policy consensus that has guided American politicians ever since the end of World War II: 1) consistently express unconditional support for the Pentagon, 2) Wall Street, and 3) Israel (especially since the 1967 War). Bernie Sanders has been the first serious presidential aspirant for several decades to challenge directly and unabashedly at least one of these pillars by way of his principled and concerted attacks on Wall Street, on the billionaire class, on the exploitative 1%. Although moderate overall, Sanders has been respectfully deferential to the other two pillars, Pentagon and Israel. Because he has mobilized an intense following among all categories of American youth there has been a media reluctance to assault his substantive views frontally, except to offer a variety of snide remarks that cast doubt on his ‘electability.’ Such...

By Jonathan Power The Brazilians have an elected president. They must keep her. If Dilma Rosseff is pushed to resign democracy has failed. Two years ago she won re-election handsomely. That is the source of her mandate. From that she derives her legitimacy. The only thing that could topple her is if hard evidence emerges that she is crook- in her case supposedly stole millions of dollars from the Brazilian oil giant, Petrobras, of which she was once head of the board. Then Congress would be within its rights to discuss her impeachment. But there is no evidence of her personal corruption- although there is evidence aplenty that her party, The Workers’ Party, has received a lot of black money, not just from Petrobras. Brazil is not a parliamentary democracy. It is not necessary for her to have a majority in parliament to rule, anymore than Barack Obama does in...

. In the 1970s there was a cult film, “Midnight Express”, directed by the young Oliver Stone. It was based on the story of an American who was sentenced to 30 years in a Turkish prison for smuggling drugs. It showed in stark reality the total lack of any semblance of human rights or normal human behavior by the Turkish authorities. It was that impression of Turkey that many of us carried forward, even as Turkey in fact was profoundly changing. Even today some hold on to what is now a discredited viewpoint, particularly in France, a country that has long made it clear it will obstruct any move to bring Turkey into the European Union. Anti-Turkey feeling exists elsewhere, particularly in Germany which has far more Turkish immigrant workers than any other nation. However, the truth is the Turkey of today is unrecognizable from that of the 1970s. Not...

Washington, DC The Big View is the West doing badly, euro and pound down with miserable growth rates; US $-growth rate better but erratic; China, India, Islam growing, Latin America (CELAC) getting its act together and probably growing. This matters for essentially bankrupt USA: China, India, Islam, CELAC are huge powers with huge minorities inside the USA: they could move in, take over. Last week’s prediction about Trump’s foreign policy came true the next day (Washington Post 22 Mar 2016): less wars, not affordable, less NATO, let Europe do it, no nation-building, building our own. He was then branded “isolationist” with US incapacity for a third option: foreign policy by peacefare. Diagnosis Any economy has two key faultlines: high vs low class, with inequality by exploitation; real vs finance economy, with crises by speculation. LEAP Press Review (noreply@leap2020.net 17 Feb 2016) traces “something Big was about to happen” to February...

Upon receiving the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Community Builder Prize Atlanta Dear President, dear Dean of Morehouse College, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am deeply honored by the prize from a college in Georgia, in the US South, that has been and is a beacon in the struggle from dominion to dignity in race relations. The civil rights movement is an American Revolution, like the feminist movement it inspired–aiming at parity and dignity for all. To refuse sharing the spoils of exploiting Reds and Blacks and poor Whites with London was far from a revolution. This college shaped Dr Martin Luther King Jr. I had the honor of meeting him twice here in Atlanta in 1960–working on desegregation without violence in Charlottesville, VA–and in 1964 in Oslo when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. This College made him use Gandhi’s clinging to truth through nonviolent struggle, satyagraha, lifting 20 million Blacks into dignity. There...

The Telegraph’s Raf Sanchez in Jerusalem. The only other media carrying the story is Russia Today and Vigilant Citizen and MintPress News also carries the story and offers a wider background What is this about?A new coalition? So the usual Western media filter, meaning it must be interesting. And it is a quite sensational story: Saudi Arabia and Israel are up to a nuclear mischief against a country that has just been prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons by means of a huge legally binding document, UN Security Council endorsement and extremely tight monitoring mechanism. What’s it about? It’s about Israel’s defence minister Moshe Ya’alon saying in public at the recent Munich conference that Arab states are “not willing to sit quietly with Iran on the brink of a nuclear bomb”. He thinks that Iran was liable to break the agreement as their economic situation improves with the lifting of international...

Lund, Sweden, March 29, 2016 Recommended reading… The general post-Brussels mainstream media discourse has shown the same profile as virtually all others since September 11, 2001: • Emphasis on who did it, the circumstances where it happened and how the crime was carried out; • The fate of the victims, the mourning of the nearest relations and the memorial; • Much larger coverage than more devastating attacks outside the West. • Absence of relevant and intellectually challenging questions related to the big WHY – Why do some people hate us so intensely, willing to die for it? • And absence of discussions about possible historical causes and action-reaction perspective – the only reason offered is that they are evil people/Muslims and evil acts must be met with force – Francois Hollande who never misses an opportunity to puff himself up talks about all of Europe being hit – 35 people...

Prefatory Note A much abbreviated version of this post was published in Al Jazeera English on March 24, 2016. Although the essential analysis is the same, the reasoning here is greatly elaborated. The themes addressed and the policies proposed are advanced in a tentative spirit. Debate and reflection are urgently needed with respect to the political violence that is being unleashed in various forms in the West and non-West. This latest terrorist outrage for which ISIS claimed responsibility exhibits the new face of 21st century warfare for which there are no front lines, no path to military victory, and acute civilian vulnerability. As such, it represents a radical challenge to our traditional understanding of warfare, and unless responses are shaped by these realities, it could drive Western democracies step by step into an enthused political embrace and revived actuality of fascist politics. Already the virulence of the fascist virus dormant...